Two weeks until Lent’s penitence, self-reflection, and fasting. Your last meal before Lent might be beignets or pancakes or crepes to use up all the fat in the house on “Fat Tuesday” for a fat-fast throughout Lent.

If you’ve seen the 2021 movie Don’t Look Up you can picture the last meal. (If you haven’t, you might want to skip this paragraph.) With the world ending, the main characters get groceries, prepare favorite dishes, and set the table. Knowing this is where they will die, they sit down with their grudges and fondnesses. They eat and talk about the food. As the dishes, table, then the whole house shakes, they discuss grinding coffee beans (and their voices, too, shake).

2024 is a scary year for most of us. What flavor of Lent do we need? “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” comes to my mind. Yet quoting it in context, we see that this was the opposite of God’s call:

On that day the Lord God of hosts called to weeping and mourning, to baldness and putting on sackcloth; but instead there was joy and festivity, killing oxen and slaughtering sheep, eating meat and drinking wine. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (Isaiah 22:12-13).

If we really were in our last days, I pray I would have the calm to gather with my loved ones and cook and eat and talk about our favorite recipes and what we love about coffee. While these are dire times, we’ve got time for more than weeping and mourning, eating and drinking. We have time to be of good use.

The ethereal tone of Ecclesiastes may speak well to Lent this year:

There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous . . . . So I commend enjoyment, for there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat, and drink, and enjoy themselves, for this will go with them in their toil through the days of life that God gives them under the sun (Ecclesiastes 8:14-15).

Eat, and drink, and enjoy ourselves, and toil through the days of our lives. We need good food, good friends, true feasts, to have the strength for this journey. We need to keep eating this Lent — and enjoy it!

And there may be a place for fasting in your spiritual practice. Fasts can be an opportunity to share, rather than gluttonize. Rather than stuff ourselves with Fat Tuesday beignets, couldn’t we prepare something rich and delicious to share with a family who can’t afford to feast?

If you find it meaningful to give up chocolate, or sugar, or alcohol, or meat during Lent, the money you’re not spending could be shared with an organization that supports equity and sustainability.

Lent is a great time to fast from food comas and alcohol hazes so we can keep our heads and listen to God’s call through the good news and the bad.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

I thought about sharing a Mardi Gras cake recipe with gluten-free and vegan variations . . . but I want to take it down a notch. So here’s a recipe for scrumptious tahini sauce that turns steamed or roasted veggies, beans or grains, or basically anything you can think of, into a rich, satisfying, simple meal. This is in ratio form, so decide how much you want (or check how much you have of these ingredients on hand) to pick your “part” size.

Tahini Sauce

2 parts lemon juice

2 parts tahini (you can start with sesame seeds, though I can never get them as smooth as I’d like in a food processor)

1 part water

1 part garlic, minced

2 parts olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

Optional: spices (e.g. cumin or paprika), herbs (e.g. parsley or cilantro)

Combine all in a food processor or blender, or simply shake and shake in a well-closed jar.